From the BrothersJudd Archives: HUMAN SACRIFICE: ABOMINATION OR SECRET TO SUCCESS (For AOG)

Genesis 22

Abraham Tested
1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.

2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

8 Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.

12 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram [a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."

Judges 11

29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites. 30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD : "If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering."

32 Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into his hands. 33 He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.

34 When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of tambourines! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, "Oh! My daughter! You have made me miserable and wretched, because I have made a vow to the LORD that I cannot break."

36 "My father," she replied, "you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me just as you promised, now that the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. 37 But grant me this one request," she said. "Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry."

38 "You may go," he said. And he let her go for two months. She and the girls went into the hills and wept because she would never marry. 39 After the two months, she returned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin. From this comes the Israelite custom 40 that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

Leviticus

18:21 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.

20:2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.

Deuteronomy

12:30 Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.

12:31 Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.

Here we have, at the heart of Rosh Hashanah, one of the foundation stones of western civilization -- the offering of Isaac. As we discussed yesterday, note the importance to the story that Isaac is considered Abraham's only son. Ishmael has been banished and is no longer Abraham's son. G-d's relationship descends from Abraham through Isaac to Israel.

The fact that Isaac is Abraham's only son -- and when G-d says only, He means now and forever -- is one of the odd things about this story. G-d has promised that Abraham's descendants will be a mighty nation, more numerous than the stars. How can that promise come true if Isaac, Abraham's only son, is sacrificed? Abraham, though a notoriously stiff-necked man, never argues with G-d but goes along. We have to suspect, don't we, that Abraham has figured out the "test." But, of course, G-d knows that Abraham knows and Abraham knows that G-d knows. So what kind of test is this? In Temple today, the Rabbi brought up an interesting suggestion: the test is not whether Abraham is willing to sacrifice Isaac. What sort of test is that? Given the time, given the mores, given the demands of neighboring gods, given that G-d is G-d, why wouldn't Abraham comply? The real test, suggested the Rabbi, was whether Abraham -- who had steeled his nerves to the task, who had traveled for days, who had bound his son and raised the knife -- would stop when told to stop. He passed that test. If he had failed, then G-d's promises would have been forfeit. As he passed, the promises remained.

But what about Jephthah and his vow that "whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering." Given the story of Isaac, given the law making human sacrifice an abomination, why would he make such a vow, why would G-d reward it and how could he (or He) see it carried out. There are important lessons in Jephthah's story about rash vows and what it means to pray and see a prayer seemingly answered. If G-d intended the Gileadites to triumph, should He have changed His mind because of Jephthah's vow? Obviously, we must be circumspect in the promises we make, to each other and to G-d.

On the other hand, the most likely explanation for the story of Jephthah's daughter is that it is misunderstood. Jephthah could not have gotten either the people of Gilead or the Priests to go along with a human sacrifice. Moreover, the story seems oddly interested in the state of his daughters virginity for a story about human sacrifice. What seems to be going on here is that Jephthah vowed that whatever came out to greet him would either be consecrated to G-d or, if appropriate, be sacrificed as a burnt offering. In ancient Israel, a person could be consecrated to G-d, cloistered and would not thereafter marry. This makes sense of the daughter's response to Jephthah's news ("Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry") as well as the ending of the story, "And she was a virgin" as opposed to "And she was a burnt offering."
Posted by David Cohen at October 5, 2005 11:39 PM

MORE: I keep meaning to email my Rabbi for his notes on a particularly nice sermon he gave a few weeks ago. One of the points he made is that it is entirely appropriate, when you come to a particularly troubling biblical passage, to say "it can't really mean that."